REACT: Who won? It's debatable.

If you think of the first of the four presidential debates as the first quarter of a football game, I say no touchdowns ... no fumbles ... and minimal yardage gain -- mostly John McCain recovering lost yardage due to economic set back and dropping the ball on the pre-debate strategy (as in threatening not to show up for the game).

Despite a lot of attempts, Barack Obama could not get control of the ball. The best sacks of the quarterback were McCain's remark that he does not have a (presidential) seal yet -- alluding to Obama's past unveiling of HIS seal, which was pretty much trash canned due to negative public reaction to the obvious (execpt to Obama) arrogance and presumptiveness of the gimmick -- and McCain's cleaver comparison of Obama's persistence in the face of misjudgement to the governing style of the unpopular George Bush.
I think the contest suffered from some bad ref'ing. This game was to be played on the foreign policy field. However, for almost the entire first half, Jim Lehrer, of PBS, had them over on the economic field. This was an inappropriate call, and cannot be explained other than Lehrer's desire to be the celebrity questioner on the pressing domestic issues of the week. He made a very lame attempt to justify the call by saying the eocnomy impacts on foreign policy. I would call for an official protest on the ruling.